Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Billionaire businessman and X owner Elon MuskA self-styled free-speech absolutist, has been locked in for months public quarrel On Content Moderation Concerns with Justice Alexandre de Moraes of the Supreme Court of Brazil.
But this time, in spite of him Poor track record Actually living up to the values he espouses — for example, he has readily obeyed India’s increasingly authoritarian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dictates of moderation — Musk may actually have a point.
The battle between Musk and de Moraes hinges on government requests to ban social media accounts linked to extremist groups that favor Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.
Musk frequently “Digital Army” Justice is targeting as part of its anti-disinformation task force. Musk has refused to appoint a legal representative to handle government requests to remove content from the site, contrary to Brazilian law.
In response, De Moraes has levied millions of dollars in fines against X, Access to the site is blocked Across the country, Brazilians announced plans to penalize those who tried Access the app via VPN, and threatened a local X employee with jail.
Although Musk is a far-from-perfect embodiment of free speech issues, the Brazilian justice has taken a more extreme stance than other democratic leaders in addressing inappropriate information — one that appears to border on outright censorship, critics say.
Veridiana Alimonti, a Brazil-based expert at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Bloomberg that by international standards of freedom of expression, blocking access to an entire platform is “problematic,” especially one that hosts both legal and illegal speech.
“I no longer post on X myself, and I will not mourn its passing when it disappears,” wrote tech journalist Casey Newton in his Platformer newsletter. “But whatever role the 140 X accounts in question in Brazil may have played in jeopardizing Brazilian democracy, they cannot threaten more than silencing the 20 million or so Brazilians who use them regularly.”
Musk’s questionable free speech record
After he bought Twitter in 2022, Musk quickly reduced moderation on the platform and reinstated accounts once banned for spreading misinformation, such as Former President Donald Trump And Conspiracy theorist Alex JonesIn the name of free speech.
More recently, he was one of the first social media moguls Defend telegraph founder Pavel Durov While last month French police arrested DurovPartly because of that Refusal to moderate content Stricter on its messaging app.
Musk’s commitment to the issue of free speech, however, is otherwise spotty, if not outright hypocritical.
This Tesla CEO Banned Parody accounts who impersonated him and threatened to sue bloggers who criticized him and his companies. He has too Fired employees who disagreed with him.
Perhaps more serious, at least in regards to his fight in Brazil, Musk said last year that he has Not a “real choice”. But to comply with government requests to restrict content in Turkey and India — both major democracies that have become increasingly authoritarian in recent years. An analysis by El Pais estimated that, under his leadership, X complied with 83% of requests from authoritarian governments to remove content.
Although his history on the issue is inconsistent, Musk has made himself central to conversations around censorship, content moderation and free speech around the world by picking fights like the one in Brazil.
War in Brazil
In Brazil, the battle for Musk became real.
By fining X more than $3 million in addition to threatening to imprison the company’s employees X’s Brazilian office closedDe Moraes also targeted Musk’s other business ventures in the country.
A Brazilian judge briefly froze Starlink’s financial accounts to levy a fine on X – a subsidiary of Musk’s company SpaceX that provides internet connectivity through its constellation of satellites.
When Starlink refused to comply with orders to block X’s access to the country, Brazilian telecoms regulators imposed sanctions on the company and Cancellation of license to operate company.
Starlink backed down, eventually complying with legal demands to block X in Brazil, but Musk didn’t give up.
Musk argues in memes
For now, Musk seems to be defending free speech (and X’s presence in Brazil) by publicly attacking de Moraes.
In a series of recent posts on X, Musk questioned de Moraes’ credibility and political motives, calling him “an evil dictator as a judge” and accusing the justice of “engaging in serious, repeated and deliberate interference” in Brazil’s most recent cases. Presidential election, during which voters elected leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva over Bolsonaro.
He also shared images of de Moraes alongside Lord Voldemort from the “Harry Potter” franchise and suggested the judge was behind bars.
These attacks could ultimately work against Musk and his companies.
His decision not to appeal de Moraes’ orders to court (and instead turned the subject into a battle of online memes) has scattered some 20 million active Brazilian X users to new platforms including Bluesky and Threads.
“Where this goes from here will really depend on Elon Musk. I think if Elon Musk decides to start complying, as he eventually did in India, for example, he might come back to X,” Mariana Valente, a law professor and director of Brazil’s InternetLab, a think tank, told Bloomberg. “But if Elon Musk doesn’t behave differently, I think X or Twitter will be blocked in Brazil for a long time.”
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